Not an Ending
by JPalmerGirl
Summary: 'His name was Asa Bryne, an Irish immigrant sent to America to help feed his family. He was seventeen years old when he was murdered, in 1833.' This is the story of a death...and the life that came after. Ghost!Jimmy (prologue is really short, sorry.)
1. Chapter 1

It was funny really, Asa didn't remember the exact moment he was born or the exact moment his first breath was taken. But he did remember the moment that he died, the moment that his life finally ebbed away, like water slipping through the chubby fingers of a child. He died slowly and painfully, it wasn't quick or merciful. But the deaths of immigrants rarely were. Asa Bryne was a seventeen year old Irish immigrant and a railroad worker.

He was too young to work in such wretched conditions, too young for his body to withstand such work. But for a young boy who had to send money back to his family in Ireland, any work was good work. He was always haunted by images of the family he had left behind, of sallow cheeks and lined eyes, of his youngest sister Katie, who was so weak from hunger that she couldn't get off her mat to play with the other children.

It was the Great Famine that did this to them, that made the Brynes send their oldest son to America for work. The place where Asa would ultimately die. Asa hadn't died from cholera like the others at Duffy's Cut. He'd been murdered and beaten to death as he tried to escape to find help for his sick friends.

They had quarantined them, like animals in a pen. So they wouldn't spread sickness, but Asa hadn't been sick. He had cholera as a small boy in Ireland, he wasn't going to get sick. But still they refused him passage. So he ran, desperately pleading with them that he wouldn't get sick.

They didn't listen however, the merely took out their clubs and began to beat the young man senseless. Asa screeched and pleaded with them to stop as he pitifully used his hands to block the blows and violent strikes from his face. He ended up dying there on the grass near the railroad tracks, the tricks he had slaved for so long to help create.

So far from his home in Ireland, where his parents were waiting for the money that would never get sent, for their son to return to them. To play and frolic once again in the fields and pastures of his birth. Instead he lay there and bled out from a wound in his head...to die alone and forgotten from a world that had forsaken him.

'His name was Asa Bryne...age 17...murdered in 1833...near the railroad tracks that the Irish boy had helped to build for so long...'

-TimeSkip-

Asa had died, but part of him hadn't. He was still among the living but existing in a separate plain, they could see him, they could touch him, but he couldn't touch them. He didn't belong among them, not alive but not truly dead.

Forced to relive his life over and over until his murder was solved by living people in a century that didn't care about unjust crimes that had passed so long ago. He never saw his family again, he tried to pass on, he really did. But he saw no white light, nothing to guide him to the heaven he had been promised while he was alive.

He did remember a voice however, a voice telling him to move on. To let go of his past life and to go forwards. But he couldn't do it, he was stuck, trapped without a solved murder, without a body to rest in a grave near the family he had loved so much in life.

He was nothing now, nothing until someone, until something could set him free from his prison. With every new person he had to pretend to be, he joined some kind of law enforcement. Desperately trying to find a living person who cared enough to solve his murder, to solve the murder of a young Irish Immigrant boy.

He found nothing, nobody.

That was how he ended up being a young man named Jimmy Palmer, an M.E assistant who worked for NCIS. A young man who was studying to be a doctor. Who wanted to help people when he got older. Even though Asa knew he would never get older, his life would repeat forever. At least that was what he thought until his humerous bone was discovered by a dog


	2. Chapter 2

"Excuse me, but could one of you help me?"

A timid sounding voice came far to Jimmy's right and the young man turned around to see a young boy, maybe eight or nine, holding a brown shoe box in his hands. The boy's gold flecked eyes darted around nervously as he tried to study everything except the Agents and M.E assistant in front of him. Suddenly the child swallowed hard and thrust the box into the arms of the first available person, which just happened to be Jimmy Palmer. The young M.E gasped sharply and stared at the box.

"Please take it! I don't want it! M-My dog found it in our backyard! I-It's haunted!"

The boy whimpered, clutching at the sides of his coat as he did so. Jimmy dimly realized that Tony was trying to talk with the child, to reassure him. McGee and Ziva were doing the same. But nobody looked at Jimmy...or the box. The young M.E was frozen and felt ill at the same time...the box held a part of his body, Jimmy just knew it. It brought back memories, memories of a young Irish boy who's life was too short and another boy, a scottish boy with red hair and green eyes that matched Asa's. He was the first person that Asa had ever really loved, the boy's name was Crowley.

_-Flashback-_

_He had been in love only once in his seventeen years and that love was returned by eighteen year old, Crowley McCastor. If you've ever been in love, you know how he felt. But Asa had never felt that kind of feeling before, it was new, it was euphoric, it was amazing. So he had no qualms about opening up his chest, about opening up his heart for Crowley to slip inside. He didn't understand why Crowley had made him feel so different, so loved and special, even when his shoulders were shaking with pure effort and sweat pooled on his brow. He honestly loved the young scottish boy, they would lay together on the same mat and muse about what their lives would be like when they could finally go home. And Asa would talk about his family. _

_How he would come close to collapsing and the only thing able to keep him upright were thoughts of his family. He imaged his little brothers with child-chubby bodies, stuffing their mouths with grapes and heavy potato and carrot broth. Food he had never truly tasted. But he imaged that it must've tasted heavenly, like the food of the gods. He imaged Katie, bright eyed, rosy cheeked and happy as she played with their brothers in the fields surrounding their home. He had never shared his day dreams with anyone and he had half-expected Crowley to laugh at him, at his idiocy. But the Scot just leaned over and pulled Asa into his chest. _

_"I'm so sorry, Asa."_

_Asa was sorry as well, he felt as if his soul had been painfully wrenched out of his chest as he watched Crowley fall sick with cholera. He was one of the firsts. Asa was there as he watched the only boy he had ever truly loved, turn blue-gray from extreme dehydration before he died. Love is a painful thing, it eats it way inside of you, seemingly harmless until you lose the one you love. Then it turns into a sharp, glass splinter, raking its way through your heart. It hurts much more than it should. Love was pure pain and nothing else. _

_Crowley was half the reason that Asa had tried to leave the bordered sickness area. He hadn't wanted Crowley to have died in vain. He wanted to save others in Crowley's name...but they just killed him, like he was nothing. _

_-End Flashback-_

Jimmy Palmer was on his knees, gagging and retching as he clutched at his stomach...the place where his stomach would've been. The box had slipped from his hands and was now laying on it's side, the yellowing and crusted upper arm bone was half falling out of it. It had a tiny crack in the middle where it must had sustained some damage in the beating, but other than that, it was his arm. Did this mean...that they were going to solve his murder? Too many overbearing thoughts were swamping Jimmy's mind, calling him to clutch his head as he doubled over. That image of the yellowing bone was burned into his retinas as he stared at it.

Tony's concerned face swam in front of his vision, he waved his hands frantically in front of Jimmy's face to gauge a reaction from the prone assistant M.E. But all Jimmy did was lunge to his feet and hurry away, leaving McGee to scoop up the bone and deposit it in its box once again. The younger Agent looked at Tony, a question in his eyes, but all the Senior Agent did was shrug and motion for McGee to follow him towards the elevator. Leaving Ziva to comfort the young boy who looked as if he was near to wetting himself in his pants.

"We should probably give that to Ducky."

Tony explained, gesturing to the bone clasped in McGee hands. The younger Agent nodded and looked at the box with wide eyes. As both Agents filed into the elevator, Tony pressing the button for Autopsy as he entered.

-PlaceSkip-

Jimmy gagged roughly as he looked at his calloused hands, he couldn't stop the tears from gushing down his cheeks as he thought of Crowley. How his breathing had gotten thick and raspy where it used to be powerful and strong, how he used to be muscled and toned but in the days impending his death, he was like a skeleton. It hurt immensely for Asa to have seen him that way, but he stayed with him, through everything, Asa stayed. Because of his love for the dying boy. Once more, it was love


End file.
